The general construction and operation of an ink-jet print cartridge is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,771,295, entitled “Thermal Ink Jet Pen Body Construction Having Improved Ink Storage and Feed Capacity,” by Baker, et al., issued 13 Sep. 1988.
The general design and construction of an ink-jet printer with a carriage that retains and aligns ink-jet print cartridges in a printer and scans these print cartridges through print zones is well known. Examples of the patents that have issued in this field of technology include: U.S. Pat. No. 4,755,836, entitled “Printhead Cartridge and Carriage Assembly,” by Ta, et al., issued 5 Jul. 1988; U.S. Pat. No. 4,872,026, entitled “Inkjet Printer with Printhead Carriage Alignment Mechanism,” by Rasmussen, et al., issued 3 Oct. 1989; U.S. Pat. No. 4,907,018, entitled “Printhead-Carriage Alignment and Electrical Interconnect Lock-in Mechanism,” by Pinkerpell, issued 6 Mar. 1990; U.S. Pat. No. 5,392,063, entitled “Spring Cartridge Clamp for Inkjet Printer Carriage,” by Rhoads, issued 21 Feb. 1995, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,706,097, by Harmon, entitled, “Near-linear Spring Connect Structure for Flexible Interconnect Circuits,” dated 10 Nov. 1987.
Ink-jet print cartridges generally include keying features which mate with corresponding features on the print carriage. Because of the keying features, only properly keyed cartridges may be utilized in a particular printer, or a printer may identify a particular ink jet cartridge by its keying features. Inkjet printers are configured and programmed to use particular print cartridges in order to print properly. Black printing of text, printing of low resolution color images and text, and printing of high resolution photographs and images may all use different print cartridges. Accordingly, the different print cartridges for use in a particular printer may utilize and present different keying features for engagement with the printer, allowing identification of the print cartridge.
Further, print cartridges that are not properly configured for a particular printer may cause unsatisfactory printing if used in a printer not intended or designed to use those particular cartridges. Thus, it is important both from a standpoint of proper printer operation for various printing jobs, and from the standpoint of customer satisfaction with the performance of an inkjet printer that only appropriate print cartridges be used.
Prior ink-jet printers, and prior ink-jet print cartridges have been designed generally so that the print cartridge is loaded and unloaded into and from the carriages of these printers either by relatively moving the cartridge vertically, or by moving the cartridge substantially vertically along with a steep, inclined, arcuate motion. The arcuate motion generally tips the print cartridge into latching engagement with a latching spring. An alternative arrangement utilized a latching lever that the user must pivot after insertion of the print cartridge in order to latch the print cartridge into operative position.
However, conventional inkjet printers and their cartridges either had no keying to provide only for properly configured cartridges to be used in a particular printer, or had a keying scheme that provided for only a single direction of engagement between keying features on the cartridge and a key engagement member or feature on the printer carriage. Thus, this dearth of keying alternatives limited the design flexibility that was available to designers of inkjet printers, and of cartridges for these printers.